General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Festival (축제) (1996 film)

Festival (축제; also romanized Chukje) is a 1996 South Korean family drama directed by Im Kwon-taek, in which a famous novelist returns to his hometown for the funeral of his mother, who had suffered from dementia for more than five years, and the three-day funeral ritual exposes and then dissolves long-standing family conflicts¹^•². It was released in South Korea on June 6, 1996, runs 107 minutes, and was produced by Taehung Pictures¹.

Key fact	Detail
Director / producer	Im Kwon-taek; produced by Lee Tae-won for Taehung Pictures¹
Release	June 6, 1996, South Korea; drama, family; 107 minutes; rated 12 and over¹
Source	Original novel Festival (1996) by Lee Cheong-jun; screenplay by Yuk Sang-hyo¹^•³
Principal cast	Ahn Sung-ki (Lee Jun-seop), Oh Jung-hae (Yong-soon), Jung Kyung-soon (Jang Hae-rim), Han Eun-jin (Jun-seop's mother)¹
Major awards	17th Blue Dragon Awards: Best Film and Best Director; 16th Youngpyeong Awards: Best Film and Best Actor (Ahn Sung-ki); 33rd Paeksang Arts Awards: Best Director⁴^•⁵
Festival screenings	1st Busan International Film Festival, Korean Panorama (1996); Berlin International Film Festival Forum (1997); International Film Festival Rotterdam (1997, European premiere)⁶^•⁷^•²
Admissions	50,561 recorded by Cine21¹

Spoilers

Story

Lee Jun-seop (Ahn Sung-ki), a renowned writer in his 40s, learns that his mother, who has lived with dementia in the countryside for more than five years, has died at 87, and he returns home with his family after canceling his appointments¹. The death stirs different emotions in different people: the sister-in-law who cared for the demented mother-in-law feels relief and sorrow at once, and the mourners who gather do not appear deeply saddened¹^•⁴.

The journalist Jang Hae-rim (Jung Kyung-soon) comes to the funeral to write an article re-examining Jun-seop's literary world, observing the proceedings as a reporter¹. Family grievances deepen with the arrival of Yong-soon (Oh Jung-hae), Jun-seop's niece, who had left home thirteen years earlier after taking money from the family and had not been seen since; she resents her uncle for not having taken in the grandmother⁴^•². As the funeral proceeds, the conflicts gradually loosen, and Yong-soon weeps after reading a fairy tale Jun-seop wrote; by the end, the relatives understand one another better and each keeps the love and life wisdom the mother left behind¹^•⁷.

Novel and film made together

The film is based on the 1996 novel Festival by Lee Cheong-jun, and the two works were created at the same time: Lee wrote the novel while the screenplay was being written and the film was being shot, drawing on the real funeral of Lee's own mother³. Lee appears briefly in the film as one of the funeral guests⁸. Festival was the second Im Kwon-taek film adapted from Lee's fiction, after Sopyonje (1993)⁹.

The Maeil Business Newspaper's 1996 review described both works as built on a Buddhist worldview of impermanence, with the dead mother's message to "give her years to the grandchildren of this earth," and framed the funeral as a process of reconciliation and a new start for the family¹⁰.

Funeral ritual and tradition

The Rotterdam festival program noted that the film shows a three-day Korean funeral ritual in detail, describing it as a specific Buddhist-Korean rite, and read the film as an expression of Im's solidarity with Korean traditions through its calm tempo². Im said in an interview that his personal ambition was to capture elements of traditional Korean culture in his films¹¹, and told Rotterdam viewers he wanted to give them "a moment to think about what is truly valuable and precious in our rapidly-changing world"². The critic Kevin Thomas, writing in the Los Angeles Times, compared it favorably in depth and breadth with Juzo Itami's Japanese film The Funeral, which also treats traditional funeral procedures¹¹.

The setting is a southern Korean province, and filming took place around Jangheung County in South Jeolla Province, the hometown of Lee Cheong-jun⁹.

Reception and afterlife

The film opened in June 1996 at theaters including the Dansungsa in Seoul and won the 17th Blue Dragon Awards for Best Film and Best Director and the 33rd Paeksang Arts Award for Best Director⁵. Cine21 records 50,561 admissions and an audience rating of 6.78¹. Im himself at times cited Festival as one of his more poorly received works⁵.

It circulated internationally in the years after release: the Berlin Forum in 1997, Rotterdam 1997, the Festival of Three Continents 1996 international competition, and later retrospectives including the Florence Korea Film Fest's Im Kwon-taek retrospective (2015) and the Seoul International Food Film Festival's 100 Years of Korean Cinema retrospective (2019)⁷^•¹². The Korean Film Archive (KOFA) preserved and digitally restored the film in 4K in 2022 and screened the restoration in its Taehung Pictures retrospective⁵^•¹³.

Reported running times differ across catalogs: Korean databases list 107 minutes¹, festival programs list 108¹² or 109², and KOFA's English program lists 105¹⁴.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026